Taking a stance on gender inequity can help companies retain employees, study finds

In the tech industry, hiring and retaining top talent is essential to thrive. Companies are offering more and more extravagant perks to gain a competitive edge in the recruiting game and hold on to their talent. But there’s a subtler way they can encourage their best and brightest to stick around.

Employees want to work for companies with values that match their own — and gender equality is becoming an increasingly important issue for women and men.

PayScale, a Seattle company that provides compensation data and software, released its annualInside the Gender Pay Gap report and the findings suggest employers should double down on gender fairness.

Taking appropriate action to ensure gender equity around pay, hiring practices, and promotion opportunities is crucial, but if employees don’t know you’re taking action, it can be as harmful as taking no action at all.

Of employees working for companies that don’t take action to address gender inequity, 74 percent of men and 71 percent of women said they plan on actively looking for a new job in the next six months. In contrast, the percentages are below 50 percent for companies that employees perceive as taking action on the issue.

“This research indicates that employees want to work for an organization that shares their same values,” said PayScale VP of Content Strategy Lydia Frank in a press release. “However, employers must also communicate their commitment to fairness to their workers. Taking appropriate action to ensure gender equity around pay, hiring practices, and promotion opportunities is crucial, but if employees don’t know you’re taking action, it can be as harmful as taking no action at all.”

PayScale surveyed about 1.8 million employees between October 2014 and 2016 for the study. More than half of employees surveyed — men and women — felt that gender inequity was a problem at their company.

Between 2015 and 2016, PayScale found a slight reduction in the national gender pay gap, which is calculated by taking the difference between median male pay and median female pay, controlled for factors like years of experience, education, company size, skills, etc. The adjusted gap was 2.4 percent in 2016, down from 2.7 percent the year before.

In the tech industry, PayScale found a 0.8 percent controlled pay gap between male and female employees. Although that gap is relatively low, the tech industry still has a lot of work to do to make sure women are equally represented. According to the study, tech workers are 68.7 percent male and 31.3 percent female.

Monica Nickelsburg is GeekWire’s Civic Editor, covering technology-driven solutions to urban challenges and the intersection of tech and politics. Before joining GeekWire, she worked for The Week, Forbes, and NBC. Monica holds a BA in journalism and history from New York University. Follow her @mnickelsburg